King of Swords (The Starfolk) Read Online Free PDF Page A

back to examining the bracelet. “It isn’t silver. Silver would have scratched and tarnished by now. Maybe platinum or tungsten? I don’t know what sort of material they used to inlay the writing. Red, blue, green… The surface of the symbols is perfectly level with the metal, as if all the materials are exactly the same hardness. How many letters?”
    “Forty-one, or nine times that many if color makes a difference—six colors plus black, gray, and white.”
    “How many words?”
    “At least a hundred. They change all the time, like a used-car lot marquee. See these three blues together? Now turn itonce around my wrist. They’re gone, see? The words change. They come back, but never in the same order. Nobody knows what language or script it is, or if it’s writing at all. Is a red fish the same as a green one? It could all be decorative for all I know.”
    “Or instructions on how ET can call home?”
    Rigel retrieved his arm, and Mira slipped her magnifying glass back into her purse. The waitress arrived, bringing them their drinks. Rigel drained his glass of orange juice. Then the food arrived, and he had to talk between gulps.
    “What do you think?” he said. “About the bracelet.”
    “It does look like writing. You should try to get a complete text; see if the order ever does repeat. If it’s as long as you think it is, it may yield to cryptography. You can write a whole book using less than a hundred words. Who have you asked about it?”
    He shrugged. “Anyone I thought I could trust. I’ve spent hours in libraries reading up on alphabets. Back in Toronto I saw a plaque in an art store window that looked somewhat similar. They told me it was seventeenth-century First Nations work from the west coast of Vancouver Island, so I went out to Tofino, where they stock stuff like that to sell to tourists. What I found there wasn’t historical, but they directed me to an artist in Ahousaht, on Flores Island. Interesting guy. He didn’t want to talk at first, but he loved the bracelet and when we got to know each other, he admitted he’d invented his own script, basing it on Rongo-rongo, but I already knew about that.”
    “Where’s Rongo-rongo?”
    “Nowhere. Rongo-rongo is a form of writing found only on Easter Island in the middle of the Pacific. It’s not the same as this—it’s just the most similar I’ve ever found. Since no onecan read Rongo-rongo, it doesn’t put me much further ahead, except that whoever made the bracelet may have pirated it, like that guy in Ahousaht.”
    Mira said, “Mm. And does it do anything else, this bangle, other than advertising best buys in secondhand flying saucers?”
    “Everything all right?” asked the waitress.
    “My friend isn’t slowing down yet,” Mira said. “Bring back the menu.” When they were alone, she said, “Well, does your little gadget do other tricks?”
    That was a creepily perceptive question, and she was a spooky person all around. Even her apparent willingness to believe in him and his bracelet was hard to swallow, but he was fairly sure that she wasn’t about to turn him in to the authorities, and if she was working on the shady side of the law, she might be just as vulnerable as he was. He was in over his head already, so he might as well tell her the rest. Besides, he owed her for the best meal of his life.
    “Yes, it does. When I was about seven or so, I was hanging out with a gang of kids playing by a river somewhere in northern Ontario. I forget the name of the river, but they were using a fallen tree as a raft. They said I could join them that day, but something kept pulling me back. I got scared, because there was nobody there, just this tug on my wrist. The harder I pulled, the harder
it
pulled. So I wasn’t on the tree with the others when it broke loose and drifted away. It rolled, of course, and two of them drowned.”
    Mira shook her head. “Seven’s not very old. I don’t mean to be insulting, but I’m not sure